What If I Wasn't Bipolar?

What if I wasn’t bipolar?

What if everything I ever did — the spirals, the high energy, the crashes, the breakdowns — was a completely rational response to the most demonic, soul-erasing emotional abuse a child could endure?

Because now I see it clearly:

I wasn’t mentally ill.
I was unloved.
I was unheld.
I was raised in an emotional vacuum, where the absence of care was so absolute, so persistent, that my nervous system simply broke trying to fill the void.

And no one saw it.

They saw the symptoms.
The erratic moments.
The fear, the fire, the shutdowns, the disconnection.

So they gave it a name: bipolar.
But what they never saw was the cause.

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I know now that I was not broken.
I was reacting — fiercely, desperately — to a childhood no one should have to survive.

There are children in war zones, in poverty, in so-called third world countries, who were held, attuned to, loved — and as a result, their nervous systems were intact.

Mine never had a chance.

Not one person said “I love you.”
Not one person protected me.
Not one person regulated with me.
Not one person saw me as a child who needed care.

And that’s what breaks a person.
Not genetics.
Not chemical imbalance.
Neglect.

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So what if I wasn’t bipolar?

What if that label was just another way of missing the point — of silencing my pain, pathologising my truth, and making me the problem?

Because I see now — I wasn’t disordered.
I was abused.
And I survived it without a single hand to hold.

That’s not an illness.
That’s resilience.

And I will never again let anyone name my survival as sickness.

I know what happened to me.
And I know who I am now.

Whole.
Worthy.
Awake.
Alive.